Power Rangers Zeo: Episode 9: Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers

When Power Rangers Zeo last left off, a children’s show sidekick was turned into a monster that terrorized Angel Grove. It could mind-control children, turning them into zombies without the flesh eating, brain eating appetite. Adam and Tanya got a little training in, too. Everything wrapped up nicely, and the only thing that might carry over into later episodes is The Defender Wheel.

Next up is an episode where the title alludes to possible body switching or evil Zeo Rangers. This is something that has come up in previous episodes, all the way back to season 1 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The only way to know how this one turns out is to watch it, so now it’s time for…

Episode 9: Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers

A superhero movie was being filmed in Angel Grove. Rocky, Tanya, and Kat were extras. Bulk and Skull were security. The movie wasn’t going well. The star complained that one of the monsters he had to fight shouldn’t be able to block his punch because he was the star. His co-star quit the movie because it wasn’t professional enough. Luckily for the director, Rocky and Skull both wanted to be in the movie. Rocky got the co-star role, while Skull got to play Rocky’s body double.

The problems didn’t stop with simple casting issues. Prince Sprocket wanted to direct a movie and needed some actors. He could use the Cogs as extras, but he needed some heroes and villains to fill out the rest of the film. Klank sent some of the Cogs to the Angel Grove film set to steal the costumes of the monsters and lead the Zeo Rangers into a trap.

Rocky, Tanya, and Kat called for help from Tommy and Adam, who quickly powered up and came to their friends’ aid. All five Zeo Rangers were captured and trapped in an alternate green room dimension. Not a room that was green, though it was surrounded by grass. It was a room for them to wait in until they were called to Prince Sprocket’s movie set.

Billy figured out the way to break the Zeo Rangers free of Prince Sprocket’s movie setting. They had to change the ending of the movie. The type of movie that Prince Sprocket usually made didn’t end well, so the Zeo Rangers had to make sure they came out on top. They needed to save a bunch of people that were trapped on a speeding bus headed for a cliff.

Once the people on the bus were saved, the Zeo Rangers had to fight all the monsters from the Angel Grove film set, brought to life by The Machine Empire. It was an action-packed fight with giant monsters, Zords, and the destruction of a bridge. The fights throughout the episode were some of the best in the series, to date. Aside from the climactic fight, there was a battle that Tommy and Aisha fought against a mechanical horse monster that was able to extend its snout. Before that, there was the fight where the Zeo Rangers got captured. They chased down the Cogs that stole the monster costumes and stumbled into a fight against dozens of Cogs. There were more bodies being thrown around in that fight than any other fight in Power Rangers history. It was a full-on war battlefield. The Zeo Rangers used their personal weapons. Rocky flew for a bit. It was mayhem. Glorious, glorious mayhem.

Okay, so this episode was not about replacement rangers. Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers was about Prince Sprocket making a movie called Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers and forcing the kidnapped Zeo Rangers to star in it. This might have been the most fun that Power Rangers Zeo has been so far, but it didn’t move the story forward at all. That didn’t matter. It was fun.

The scope of the episode was bigger than any episode of Power Rangers Zeo thus far, aside from the premiere two-parter. There were more Cogs than ever before. There might be a dozen, at most, in the majority of episodes. That wasn’t the case here. Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers had dozens upon dozens of Cogs fighting the Zeo Rangers in an open field. It was a sight to behold. There were four monsters attacking at once, with unexpected powers. One of the monsters had an extendable snout and could shoot water from it. All of this made for the most fun in any of the battle sequences since the Zeo era began.

That didn’t mean that there were no odd things about the episode. The Japanese footage always made for weird things happening in the Power Rangers television shows. This episode was no exception. When the Zeo Rangers saved the passengers from the bus, everyone lay safely on the hillside and watched the bus careen over the cliff. All the passengers that the Zeo Rangers saved were Japanese. This wasn’t too odd. Angel Grove was based on Los Angeles and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, there is a Little Tokyo section of the city, which is primarily Japanese. Angel Grove could have had its own equivalent of Little Tokyo and that bus could have been from there. It was noticeable, though, that the passengers were Japanese people from the Japanese footage.

There was one other strange cultural thing that wasn’t specific to Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers, but a strange thing through the entire Power Rangers Zeo run. The Machine Empire were a bunch of mechanical aliens from a distant galactic location. Yet they spoke English when they arrived within the range of Earth. That was perfectly fine. A little suspension of disbelief can get a person past that. The really strange thing was that Klank, the general for The Machine Empire, spoke with a heavy Scottish accent. How did he get the heavy Scottish accent that none of the other Machine Empire characters had? There was no explanation. Just a nagging feeling that something strange was going on.

Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers was a fun episode of Power Rangers Zeo that didn’t do anything to move the story forward. The Zeo Rangers got to be in a movie for The Machine Empire, while Rocky, Tanya, Kat, and Skull got to be in a Hollywood movie. Was there a Hollywood in Angel Grove? Who knows? The next episode might be able to keep the fun momentum going. It might even bring the character elements back into the show. Come back soon for the post about Graduation Blues to find out.